<i>The Cultural Work of Empire: The Seven Years' War and the Imagining of the Shandean State</i> (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Cultural Work of Empire: The Seven Years' War and the Imagining of the Shandean State W. B. Gerard Carol Watts . The Cultural Work of Empire: The Seven Years' War and the Imagining of the Shandean State. Toronto: Toronto, 2007. Pp. 352. C$71. More a history than an exercise in literary analysis, this book attempts to cast "the process of English state formation" in the 1750s and 1760s in the image of the Shandean (after the Yorkshire expression for "crazy" or "crackbrained"). The determined claim that this "is a book about the work of Laurence Sterne" is hollow, as Ms. Watts mounts her hobbyhorse to prove "the historical constitution of subjectivity" in mid-century England; peremptorily defensive, she explains early that her approach employs "varying kinds of proximity" to Sterne's writing. Further, "the digressive 'Shandean' momentum of Sterne's writing relates in unspoken ways to the notation of imperial experience." Sterne's ever-flexible texts confound even these ends: for instance, it is difficult imagining how the Shandy universe, with its sense of proscription ("four English miles diameter") and abundant idiosyncrasy, might mirror the vast global vision and complexities of mid-century English politics and culture. This grab bag of nuanced but generally unconvincing parallels between English political and cultural history and Sterne's life and opinions is belied in the construct that this "emphatically provincial" world of the Shandys is somehow not representative of isolation and individuality, but of a "defensiveness in the setting of boundaries . . . at a time of emergent nationalism." Though short on literary analysis, this history offers glimpses into Sterne's texts. Uncle Toby reflects midcentury militarism in being trapped into reliving his injury through his own storytelling. Robert Filmer's idea of Adam's "kingly right" to "all government and propriety" illuminates Walter's patriarchal authority over his wife and children, a section marred by such fossilized jingoism as, "Wielding the phallus confirms masculine power." A symbol of equality, Phillis Wheatley is the subject of productive meditation. And, yes, Tristram Shandy ends with a "fear of impotence [and] loss of autonomy." Some discussion feints at substance—for instance, the role played by sexuality in Tristram Shandy—but Sterne's text is too often simply the stranger at whom one briefly nods. [End Page 72] At times the hobby-horse gets out of control. The "proximity" game allows that Tristram Shandy begins as "a book of the war" because of its dedications to William Pitt, who (among many other things) was "architect" of the Seven Years' War; Pitt as an advocate of patriotism "in expansionist form" adds to a murky "unspoken" Sternean agenda. Or, concocting a "fantasy" linking Wilkes's "An Essay on Women" and Tristram Shandy, Ms. Watts posits, "The phallic 'enchanters wand' conjures up visions of impossible plentitude, acted out in onanistic encounters, or in pornographic money-shots which suggest new trajectories of expenditure." How does a nice reader end up in a place like this? Two chapters highlight Sterne. The first considers iconic "Poor Maria," expansively considered as a cultural object with only a glance to previous scholarship. Maria's madness may be rooted in religious and social hierarchies, but lost love, the obvious cause, is overlooked. "Amnesiac consumption" is not pursued in favor of seductive generalizations. Bent by critical determination, poor Maria becomes a universal symbol. She is a type of "fallen woman" because she squanders "time's resources." She is a player in "the history of capitalism" because of her lack of productivity. She represents the "haemorrhaging of population from the countryside." She could be just about anything, here victimized by theoretical exploitation. Compounding this forced reading of Sterne is its grounding in hoary Marxist theory, such as Robert Markley's flawed vision of sentiment as a "theatrics of bourgeois virtue." Clinging to the discredited idea of a monetary basis for sentimentalism, Ms. Watts sees sentimental fiction as creating "a fantasy of economic intelligibility" for pathetic characters. Certainly money can be involved in sentimental transactions—just as in modern solicitations for charity—but it is a fallacy that every sentimental transaction in Sterne is primarily economic. The other Sterne-based chapter addresses Bramine's Journal, described as...